Desire
desire (v.) "to wish or long for, express a wish to obtain," c. 1200 C E. ‘Desire’ is a force that moves creatures towards what they desire, and that movement is thwarted, potentially or actually, only by other forces, often the desires in contradiction within the same creature, or within other creatures. Historically, the concept of a spirit refers to the same thing, with greater or lesser definition. All human discourse is in some sense a discourse of desire—indeed saliently so in Homer, Shakespeare, and the wisdom literature of all nations. A creature acting in/under the spirit of rage is a creature that desires to inflict the action of rage, hence the concept of spirit is synonymous with that of desire, indeed so is the concept of a God: ‘Rage—Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles, murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses’. Desire, will, appetite, want, spirit and lust, are for the intelligent all synonyms in human history—the less intelligent use them synonymously too, but as a habit if not without consciousness. Someone acting under the spirit of gluttony has appetite, and desire, he wants and wills to satisfy that gluttony in his lust. Desire has been the object and subject of human study for all of human history, and remains so to this day, and will be tomorrow, since it is so fundamental. In itself to study is to act on desire, and since desire is fundamental in study, study cannot but be in some sense for the human a study of desire (anyone who laboriously attunes himself to something will come face to face with desire, while it is indeed desire which brought him there: the desire to know). Most if not all authors have done a discourse on desire under one name or another, such as Nietzsche famously under the concept "will to power". Aristotle notes that desire is one of the basic "parts" of the soul, as does Plato. "The Upanishads contain two main themes related to desire. One is connected to its role as a motive. The other is its heavy emphasis on renouncing desires and trying to reach a totally desireless state." 09 Humans meeting or attempting to meet their desires is hypergame. Level of desire from personal to global or cosmic. See e.g: Personal desire. See also: Need Deleuze and Guattari oppose the Freudian conception of the unconscious as a representational "theater", instead favoring a productive "factory" model: desire is not an imaginary force based on lack, but a real, productive force. Blake’s Devil says in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, “Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained… And being restrain’d it by degrees becomes passive till it is only the shadow of desire (18).” The concept of desiring-production is part of Deleuze and Guattari's more general appropriation of Friedrich Nietzsche's formulation of the Will to Power. In both concepts, a pleasurable force of appropriation of what is outside oneself, incorporating into oneself what is other than oneself, characterizes the essential process of all life. "Both in the West and in China, in the past as well in the present, desire is usually understood as something abnormal, avaricious and excessive, the opposite of rationality, to be controlled and suppressed in man. Deleuze's desire is much wider, referring not only to man, but also to animals, objects and social institutions. In Deleuze's view, desire is not a psychic existence, not lack, but an active and positive reality, an affirmative vital force. Desire has neither object, nor fixed subject. It is like labour in essence, productive and actualisable only through practice." Rhizomata Spirit; Want; Will; Need; Lust; Love; Motivation; Inspiration Libido; Energy;